"She would chase you if you had a can with a tab on it," said Melanie Hatrak, one of her grandchildren.

Inspired by a newspaper article, the Perth Amboy woman planned to donate the aluminum tabs to the Ronald McDonald House of New Brunswick. There, the tabs would be recycled and cashed in to help defray the cost of putting up families when their children are hospitalized at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.

And even though Eleanor Kwasnofski died of lung cancer in May at the age of 76 before she could see her good deed to an end, her family wasn't about to let her mission go unfulfilled.

"We've been going a little crazy getting all the tabs together," said Joseph Hatrak, another of Kwasnofski's grandchildren.

When their work was completed, they came up with an astounding 121 pounds of tabs, filling five 5-gallon water jugs, about a dozen 20-ounce pretzel jugs and various other plastic containers, bags, and boxes.

"It sounded real good that this would pay for a room for a parent when their child was in the hospital," said Joe Kwasnofski, Eleanor's husband.

Joe Kwasnofski said it wasn't out of character for his wife to help others. "She couldn't sit still," he said.

"Everything she did, she did for someone else," Melanie Hatrak added.

Lined up side by side, the containers took up five steps on a stairway in the Kwasnofskis' home until last Thursday.

After taking one last picture of the containers, eight members of the family, representing three generations, loaded the silvery trove into the trunk of a sport utility vehicle and drove to the Ronald McDonald House.

Kathy Dennis, the house manager at the charity, thanked the family for their donation, which it takes to Central Jersey Recycling in Edison. Dennis gave the Kwasnofskis a tour of the three-story building, which can hold five families.

Kwasnofski's 121 pounds yielded a modest $57 at a rate of 47 cents a pound. And while Dennis said she's seen larger donations, the circumstances surrounding this one were unique.

"This is the first time I've ever had this happen," she said. "I was quite touched by it, and by how strongly they felt they needed to do this for her."

The family of Habib Alsaqqaf, a native of Dubai whose daughter has undergone surgeries at Robert Wood Johnson, knows all donations, small and large, are going to a good cause.

Alsaqqaf said long stays in hotels were hard on his family. "This is the right place for the children," he said while preparing a meal in the house's communal kitchen.

With the tabs delivered and the tour completed, the Kwasnofskis left the Ronald McDonald house looking relieved, and a bit tearful. One-hundred-twenty-one pounds of aluminum had finally reached their final destination.

"I thought it said a lot about the family and what their grandmother meant to them," Dennis said of the donation.